The people involved in assisting trauma residents on a military base in the middle of the jungle, caring for inmates in maximum-security prisons, traveling hundreds of miles down dirt roads to deliver medical care, welcoming a baby into the world and allowing the least amount of pain to those dying in a nursing home all have one thing in common.
They are all profiles of nurses featured in award-winning photographer and filmmaker Carolyn Jones’ documentary “The American Nurse.”
On Tuesday at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, Jones spoke on the documentary which was screened prior to the lecture that evening.
“I grab my camera, like I always do, and try to develop photos that bring some hope,” Jones said.
Jones is the co-founder for the nonprofit, 100 People: A World Portrait, which promotes an educational, creative outlook on the world.
The documentary profiles five nurses working in nearly impossible situations.
This event was part of IU Media School’s Speaker Series program.
The program gives students and area residents the opportunity to meet with some of the top media professionals in the country. The screening and lecture following the film were both open and free to students and the public.
“The American Nurse” premiered nationwide during National Nurses’ Week in May. The film was adapted from Jones’ book, also titled “The American Nurse.”
The inspiration for the book, and then the movie, came from Jones’ personal experience with a nurse when she was battling breast cancer.
“I had an amazing nurse, yet still didn’t know anything it meant to being that kind of person,” Jones said.
The audience of the event was a mixture of both IU Media School students and either retired or still-active nurses.
There were about one hundred people in attendance for the filming and lecture.
“This film showed the amazing privilege it is to be a nurse and take care of people,” said Deb Wellman, a nurse at IU Health Bloomington Hospital who attended the screening.
The lecture brought the audience on a journey through Jones’ professional experience, starting from moving to New York right out of college to one day ending up in the middle of the Sahara desert with only two days worth of water and an empty tank of gas.
“The thing I learned that day was to find purpose,” Jones said. “To have meaning is the most beautiful thing.”
One moment in the documentary, a nurse being profiled in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Tanya, remarked on her purpose as a nurse.
“I’m not here to judge them, I’m here to take care of them,” said Tanya in the documentary when asked about caring for criminals.
Jones dedicated her work to the 3.2 million nurses caring for others in the United States. She wanted to express in her work that nurses know how to make the hospitals run better and the world run better, as well.
The next project Jones will be starting will be focusing on issues of death and dying. Like her previous film, the storyline will be told through the eyes of a nurse.
Looking ahead, Jones said she hopes to take away the misconception that journalism is dying.
Living through the time of the Gulf War, Jones saw the necessity of 24-hour news, but now sees it as a detriment to the stories that should be told versus the ones put in to fill space.
“Stay out of your own way and let people use your own work to build their own voice,” Jones said.
